My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Hi,

First I'll say that I don't know all that much about monitors.

I have started to have a lot of floaters in my eyes. If you have them, I'm sure you know what I mean. Those horrendous bits of cell in the fluid part of your eye that are nothing more than a nuisance, but spoil your vision nonetheless.

I went to the optometrist and he didn't seem to think that being on a computer a lot had anything to do with these floaters.

Now, I have a Samsung SyncMaster 750s monitor and it is on 1280x1024 so that I can 4-table. The refresh rate is 60 Hertz, whatever that means. The monitor is quite bright.

I recently turned the brightness down to 40 from 50, hoping that would help.

Is there anyone that knows a lot about eyesight and monitors? Is this monitor hurting my eyes? I'm Canadian so I'd have to pay a fair bit to get one of these Dell 2001FPs that everyone is raving about. If I get that monitor, will it make *that* much difference? Is it worth the money?

Ryan

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The refresh rate is 60 Hertz, whatever that means.

[/ QUOTE ]

ouch.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

60Hz is terrible, your eyes run faster than that. This is causing eyestrain and could easily be contributing to your floaters. You shouldn't spend any prolonged time in front of any CRT monitor running less than 72Hz.
At the risk of offending optometrists, seeing them about floaters is like having your cars engine rebuilt by the guy who washes your windscreen at the traffic lights. Go see an opthamologist. And if you can't afford an LCD, but yourself a 19" 1600x1200@75Hz, your eyes will thank you for it. BTW- are you getting headaches after an hour or two??

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

I didn't bookmark it but somewhere on the web I read that LCDs are better on the eyes and heavy use of CRTs might be a glaucuma risk. Maybe someone with energy can find some links [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

~ Rick

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Please, buy a Dell 2001FP for the sake of your eyes! Improving your winrate because of no overlap is just a bonus.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

I do get some headaches, yes.

Hmm, maybe it's time to get that 2001LCD

Ryan

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Does the hertz only depend on the monitor or does it have something to do with your graphics card or something?

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Get a better monitor. The sudden onset of a lot of floaters in your vision is another matter. I recently had the same thing happen to me. Go see an opthamologist. It turned out to be a central retinal vein occlusion and could have cost me my vision in one eye. I had just been to an optometrist for an eye exam a couple weeks earlier and he didn't notice any problems. Better safe than sorry.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Try and get a US address to receive the box (friend of a friend or whatever), or try and call Deringer or a company that deals in Canada/US transport, maybe they can make a deal with you to receive the box.

I got mine for 480US. Went to US to pick it up (45 minutes [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]).

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

The eye floaters are capillaries that burst when you mature. You are probably in your late teens? Its just something that happens when you stop growing.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

I'm 27 and they've come on like wildfire in the last year. I'd never had this problem before.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Your floaters have nothing to do with the monitor 99% of times. I had a similar problem recently affecting my right eye. I have done a lot of reading on this and I suggest you visit an ophtalmologist specialist as soon as possible. Most times it's something harmless but you need to make sure with a specialist doctor.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

I realize that an optometrist isn't technically an "eye-doctor" but the one I have has a very expensive rather large new machine that takes a full picture inside the eye and he assured me I have nothing to worry about with respect to the floaters. So I'm not worried that there's anything drastically wrong and I don't think an opthamologist would have any better equipment than this place would.

I think a new monitor is in order though.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

I don't know about the equipment... My left eye was red, a couple weeks ago, and went to see an optometrist. She had some funky machines too. She diagnosed me with an eye infection and prescribed cortico-steroid drops. After a couple days of using the drops, I had developed acute pain in both my eyes. I went to see an ophtalmologist and he told me to throw the drops in the garbage. Turns out the drops could've damaged my eyes. Oh it turns out I didn't even have an infection!

Bottom line is I will never go see an optometrist for my eyes EVER again.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Is there any disadvantage to turning up the refresh rate on your monitor? I just checked and mine is running at 60Hz. I can bump the setting up to 75Hz if I want, but I haven't had any eye strain or anything in the past. Should I do this as a precautionary thing?

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Turn up the monitor to as high as it will go.

60 is way slow.
75 is slow
85 is the lowest to keep my headaces away.
When I was using CRTs I tried for at least 100 to 120 to reduce eye strain. A quality CRT and video card might go as high as 200hz.

LCDs are the only way to go if you sit in front of a monitor all day.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

This only matters for non-LCD monitors, if you don't have an LCD, then yes, you need to increase the refresh rate, just make sure your monitor supports whatever you choose.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The eye floaters are capillaries that burst when you mature. You are probably in your late teens? Its just something that happens when you stop growing.

[/ QUOTE ]

this is relieving, I got them on my od CRT when it only supported 60hz. I got a samsung crt now that is recommended at 1600x1200 at 74 hrz. this is not an option for me when i try to set the fresh rate when right clicking my desktop. is there any way I can manually change this?

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Optometrists are not qualified to give medical advice. And believe me an opthalmologist can have more "funky" equipment. Of course I am not a doctor myself but because I had a recent experience, the advice was to see a specialist. 99.9% it is nothing dangerous but there are a few nasty diseases that need to be treated ASAP and only a specialist can diagnose them.

Anyway your optometrist is much more qualified to give general advice than me and if he says its fine then no reason to worry. Personally when it comes to eyes I can become a bit hypochondraic. Hope everything goes well!

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Optometrists are trained primarily to prescribe glasses or contact lenses. Most do a very competent job of that. They are not medical doctors and really not qualified to diagnose or treat medical problems. There is nothing wrong with seeing an optometerest to prescribe corrective lenses, but if you have a medical condition related to your eyes, you really should see an M.D. A family physician or internist is probably better than an optometrist. The GP will refer you to an opthalmologist if necessary.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Floaters, which I have had the unfortunate experiecne of having aas well, do not have anything to do with monitor, etc. They happen with neurological problems and many people get them with age.

I'm not a doctor, but I seriously doubt your monitor has anything to do with it.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

My wife has had these and other eye problems and she has been examined pretty thoroughly. Her floaters were described as optical migraines which as far as I understand are essentially a reaction to stress.

Doesn't mean yours are, just another option but you should really get them checked out by a full fledged opthomologist rather than an optometrist.

Re: My monitor. Will my eyes end up fried?
 

Get a big CRT monitor. I can run 1600X1200 @ 85hz and my eyes never hurt.